In contrast to its behavior under previous leaders, the Fed under Janet L. Yellen, the current chairwoman, and her predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke, has sought to clarify its intentions by publishing long descriptions of policy-making deliberations, convening regular news conferences and releasing quarterly rounds of economic forecasts by senior Fed officials.

But a new paper by a group of economists argues that the Fed’s efforts in recent years to speak more clearly about its plans for monetary policy are imbuing investors with false confidence and setting up markets for disruptive disappointments when those plans change.

The Fed should stop talking about the likely timing of policy moves and instead encourage investors to focus on the evolution of economic conditions, according to the paper, presented on Friday at an annual monetary policy conference hosted by the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Amir Sufi, a University of Chicago professor and one of the five authors, said that investors were now reacting more strongly to the Fed’s pronouncements than to the publication of key economic indicators like the government’s monthly jobs report.

The Fed is trying to find its way in a new world. It is raising interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis. It is also raising rates for the first time since fully embracing the idea — now conventional wisdom among central bankers — that clarity is a central element of effective monetary policy.

Shaping the expectations of investors enhances its control over interest rates, and thus the broader economy. But there is no consensus about the best way for a central bank to speak clearly.

Mr. Sufi and his collaborators argue the Fed is sharing the wrong information. The Fed sets policy based on its expectations for the economy and a set of informal rules about the best way to meet its goals of moderating inflation and maximizing employment. Economists call those informal rules a “reaction function.”

The Fed’s prediction in December that it expected to raise its benchmark interest rate by about one percentage point in 2016 combined these two elements.

The paper argues that it would be better for the Fed to draw a clearer distinction between its expected economic outlook and its desired policy. That way, investors who disagree with the Fed’s economic forecasts can plug in their own forecasts to predict the Fed’s reaction if the Fed’s forecast is incorrect.

Instead, the news media and investors tend to latch on to the projected timetable, encouraging too much equanimity about the course of policy, only to be surprised when changes in economic conditions produce changes in the Fed’s plans.

“The Fed has relied much too heavily on time-based forward guidance,” said Frederic Mishkin, a professor of economics at Columbia University and a former Fed governor, who presented the paper. The other authors were Michael Feroli, chief United States economist at JPMorgan Chase; David Greenlaw, an economist at Morgan Stanley; and Peter Hooper, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities.

An audience heavily seeded with Fed officials greeted the paper with skepticism.

After the 2007-08 financial crisis, the Fed was able to increase the effect of low interest rates by predicting that rates would remain low for years to come. John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, compared that kind of date-based guidance to a sledgehammer that was no longer needed, and he noted that the Fed already had moved away from offering such specific predictions.

Now the Fed faces the opposite challenge: An environment in which it must convince investors that it does not know where rates will be next year.

But being vague may not be the best way to communicate uncertainty.

Mr. Williams said the Fed needed to be simple and explicit because “the public has limited bandwidth.” Mr. Williams, who is fond of communicating through T-shirts, then produced a customized shirt emblazoned with that message.

Narayana Kocherlakota, the former president of the Minneapolis Fed who is now a University of Rochester professor, suggested that neither side in the debate was right and that the Fed might want to seek other counsel.

There is an “idea that economists are necessarily going to be great at communication,” he said. “Many non-economists tell me that’s wrong.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: Fed’s Transparency on Policy Is Questioned. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe